61 Public perception Quotes

I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people's minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.

The appropriation of radical thinking by lazy, self-obsessed hippies is a public relations disaster that could cost the earth.

I think with anybody who's doing well in the public eye or whatever, there's always gonna be a shift because people don't wanna see somebody happy all the time. And they're gonna try to take shots at people.

It saddens me that a historic event like this is being misconstrued by a small but vocal group of critics trying to spread the notion that the UN gathering is really the work of radicals and atheists bent on destroying our families.

What rage for fame attends both great and small! Better be damned than mentioned not at all.

For every age there is a popular idea about what madness is, what causes it, and how a mad person should look and behave; and it's usually these popular ideas, rather than those of medical professionals, that turn up in songs and stories and plays and books.

You know it's flattering when there's a rumor that says I'm bisexual. It means I can play more kinds of roles. I'm open to whatever people want to call me. I've never really been attracted to men sexually, but I don't think I would be afraid of it if it happened.

Moviegoers like to believe that those they have made stars are great actors. People used to say that Gary Cooper was a fine actor - probably because when they looked in his face they were ready to give him their power of attorney.

I'd like to believe that the people that have supported me in my work or identified me in my films, the people that feel they know me, they do and they don't have misconceptions.

So I made a mistake. That happens. It proves I'm human, which you know, for some people, is a revelation....I was also told that the greeting ceremony had been moved away from the tarmac but that there was this eight-year-old girl and I said, 'Well, I, I can't, I can't rush by her, I've got to at least greet her.' So I greeted her, I took her stuff and I left. Now that's my memory of it.

I've been nine stone for 20 years, I always eat what I want, it's not an issue for me. But it pisses me off - because if people did decide that I starved myself, it would have a direct consequence on what we advocate!

It always did bother me that the American public were more interested in me than in my work. And after all there is no sense in it because if it were not for my work they would not be interested in me so why should they not be more interested in my work than in me. That is one of the things one has to worry about in America. ~ Ch. 2

Sorry to say this, I don't think he's been that good from the get-go. I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well.

Now my education, life and consciousness are talked about by those who cannot understand what I wrote, what I think, what is my life. They make me up from their subjective imagination and attack me publicly as well as secretly. Because my novels completely obscure my behaviour and ideas, and result in a lot of misunderstandings, my name is related to nihilism or humanism, although I have written a book of over three hundred pages to explain my ideas (this book is very easy to understand and without a metaphysical term). Those who talk about me never read it. They judged my ideas according to one of my short stories, then deduced a variety of strange conclusions and decided which doctrine I belong to. I have been caught in this predicament all these years and cannot get rid of it...

It's by no means a pleasant prospect, but what else is there? I once saw the 82nd Airborne doing rescue and psychological operations in the wreckage of Hurricane Andrew. I respect their dedication, and the population was thrilled to see them.

That shit wasn't about race : that shit was about fame. If O.J. wasn't famous, he'd be in jail right now. If O.J. drove a bus, he wouldn't even be O.J. He'd be Orenthal the Bus Driving Murderer.

It was here in Toronto that it all started. The biggest travesty in the industry went down right here, when the People turned on the People's Champion. Last year at WrestleMania, 68,000 of you mothercanuckers booing the rock out of the bulding!

All Paris knew him as a fighter, a recluse, guarding his privacy with cruel, crushing words. The habitues of the Paris boulevards defended themselves against his scorn by accusing him of insincerity. 'Degas,' they said, 'would like to see his reflection in a boulevard window in order to give himself the satisfaction of breaking the plate-glass with his cane.'

I have talked to you in the past but we have always exchanged pleasantries. And it has always been assumed that I am Kaltenbrunner, the big bad man next to Himmler and the successor of Himmler. But I think you can see by this time, after having treated my brain hemorrhages, both in the hospital and here in my cell, that I am not the disagreeable, uncouth fellow the public probably thinks because of all the atrocities committed under Himmler's rule, and of which I am totally innocent.

I am thought of as another Himmler. (Smiles.) I'm not. The papers make me out as a criminal. I never killed anyone.

What they had me doing first was autographing copies of Come and Get It at the Bon Marche, where I had been fired a couple of years back. That was bad enough but think of me autographing a book written by somebody else. That took crust but it didn't turn out so badly because when I got to the store, about twenty people finally strolled in and looked at me from a distance and kept their buying firmly in control. What the Goldwyn people had forgotten was that up that way I'm still remembered as the freak from West Seattle High.

'It's a funny thing this celebrity. If you don't wave back you're a miserable bugger, if you do wave back you're a big-headed bugger. I don't know.'

Anyway, I am not a fearful person, don't suffer from angst, and game fans don't bother me in the least. Back in the early 80s when there was a lot of sensationalist press about D&D, and the rabid jerks were whipped up to a frenzy against the game thus, I used to get a lot of very nasty letters and phone calls from non-gamers, and even a few death threats.

'When all is said and done, America will understand that Michael Moore smells like pancakes.'

If I had one thing that I wanted people to say about me, what would it be? Hmm . . . Probably: Oh, she's so tall! Oh my gosh, she's so tall!

A referendum is little more than a 'rumour of choice.' The idea behind the mechanism, ever since its first modern manifestations two centuries ago under Napoleon, has been to replace democracy with the sensation of democracy. That is: to replace the slow, complex, eternally unclear continuity of democracy, and all the awkwardness of citizen participation, with something clear and fast which allows those in power to impose their agenda. Through an apparently simple question with a one-syllable answer, those who ask can get a blank cheque from the citizenry; that is, if they choose their moment well and come up with a winning question.

From time to time throughout his long life, scientists and commentators dismissed him as a showman. Would that we had a whole troupe of such scientific showmen.

What helps it now, that Byron bore, With haughty scorn which mocked the smart, Through Europe to the Aetolian shore The pageant of his bleeding heart? That thousands counted every groan, And Europe made his woe her own?

If we try to keep a sense of balance, the exposures of the past several months are analogous to the discovery that the directors of Murder, Inc. were also cheating on their income tax. Reprehensible, to be sure, but hardly the main point.

Boat Trip arrives preceded by publicity saying many homosexuals have been outraged by the film. Now that it's in theaters, everybody else has a chance to join them. Not that the film is outrageous. That would be asking too much. It is dim-witted, unfunny, too shallow to be offensive, and way too conventional to use all of those people standing around in the background wearing leather and chains and waiting hopefully for their cues. This is a movie made for nobody, about nothing.

In fact it was at the Rockingham County event that he got something no other potential presidential candidate - Republican or Democrat - has received: a lengthy standing ovation just in the middle of his introduction.

I also like to ride Segways. How much fun that is! Anybody think that's fun? I hope so... There's an awful lot of people in the world that sneer at Segways because other people are having fun. There must be something bad about it. But I always tell people, that hey, these Segways are so environmentally conscious. I carry four of them in the trunk of my Hummer.

The most dangerous man in America.

I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.

... a fairly common pattern in television news: right at the end a smile comes onto the face of the newsreader and this is the scientific joke - 'some scientist has proved that such and such is the case.' ... And it's clearly the bit of fun at the end, it's not serious at all. I want science to be taken seriously, because, after all, it's less ephemeral - it has a more eternal aspect than whatever the politics of the day might be, which, of course, gets the lead in the news.